Not blind but my son is. For him, any girl can be a 10.

Getting used to using text to speech. I listen to chat rooms, or read books or the news or reddit, while doing housework, traveling, or anything else. I don't know what I'd do if I had to look at my screen the entire time! Sighted folks are stuck staring at a monitor or a tiny phone all the time. I can just listen to Reddit in one ear with my headphones, while living my life and interacting with the world around me.

Having the right-of-way, especially in crowded places. It's easier to take your time

It gave meaning to my life.

I was suicidal and hopeless when my sister gave me this book called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The book is a meditation on what the gruesome experience of Auschwitz taught Frankl about the primary purpose of life: the quest for meaning, which sustained those who survived.

I read the book in one night and have since read / listened to it many times over. The book is still with me on a day-to-day basis. Frankl views suffering not as an obstacle to happiness but often the necessary means to it, less a pathology than a path.

”If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

Such men are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.”

Looking back, I can shout to the world “I went through it all!” The suffering of becoming blind had become an inspiration. It had become a trophy. It had become an achievement that no one can ever steal.

To quote Frankl; “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

Here in Portugal we enjoy a number of benefits such as rebates on the purchase of assistive technologies, right of way, tax benefits, free access to the national health service, employment quota in the public sector, right to a disability pension, and more for having a total disability score greater or equal to 60%, and there are even more benefits for people with a disability score of at least 80%. To put things into perspective, a 10% visual acuity (the minimum threshold to be considered legally blind in the US) has a disability score of 75% here without any other disabilities.

I never took advantage of any benefits before going totally blind.

Let's see. Not having to use the screen while surfing, and not needing duplicate checks. My mom used to like to take a look at my finances so I stopped ordering duplicates a while ago.